Grapevine to record public meetings on video

She said she has listened to the audio and realized "if you didn't know the voices of the people you wouldn't know who was speaking."

The watchdog group A Better Grapevine has been shooting video of the meetings for several months and posting them on You Tube.

Kathleen Thompson, a member of the group, said she attended a Nov. 19 council workshop where video recording was discussed. Though no vote was taken because it was a workshop, the council agreed to put out requests for proposals to do the job.

"I could not have been happier to have been sitting in that meeting," said Thompson, who has run unsuccessfully for council. "I'm not the only who has tried to listen to the audio and just gotten lost."

Swagit, a Plano company that handles Southlake City Council video streaming and archiving as well as others in North Texas, went over options with the council at the workshop.

Swagit installs the cameras and provides an encoder. The meetings are streamed live online and archived for online access later. Visitors to the website can go directly to specific agenda items or search for a word and get subclips pertaining to the search.

The company's yearly cost for streaming and archiving council and Planning and Zoning Commission meetings would be $10,200.

Equipment for the council chambers would be $24,985 for four cameras and equipment. Two cameras to the council conference room for workshops would be $14,742. Two cameras and equipment for the Planning and Zoning conference room would be another $20,489.

Planning and Zoning Commissions frequently take place at the same time as council meetings, so they require a separate room.

To save money, Mayor William D. Tate suggested moving council workshops into council chambers, so equipment would be needed only there and in the Planning and Zoning conference room.

The options besides having an off-site company put the package together included hiring staff to do the work, but the council instead decided to put out requests for proposals.

The expenditure will require official council approval, so the system probably wouldn't be installed until sometime next year. A representative of Swagit said installation takes about 45 days.

Until then, A Better Grapevine posts its recordings at www.youtube.com/user/BetterGrapevine. To learn more about A Better Grapevine, visit

www.bettergrapevine.org.

To see how Swagit's system works, take a look at Southlake's council meetings at

www.cityofsouthlake.com.